Experts, including ordinary people who’ve lived through loss, insist that any and all major decisions should be put off for at least one year. For 12 months don’t do anything rash. Don’t get involved in a new relationship, don’t move, don’t buy, don’t sell…..dont, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t
Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone, Some people are more resilient. They don’t need time. They have that enviable, almost annoying way of only walking on the sunny side of everything,
I’m going on month four- post loss. I won’t apologize for having the occasional bout with grief, but I’m also getting bored. I mean no disrespect for the dead, but I’ve tried to refrain from doing all the things I’m NOT supposed to do. For me, doing nothing only makes matters worse.
So, I bought a new house….well, it’s new to me. I didn’t deliberate over it for weeks. There was no lengthy meditation, no ashram in sight. I came to the decision very quickly and in what some might think is crazy reasoning. I broke the same little toe on the same table in two weeks. When it happened, I screamed at the top of my voice, letting out some choice expletives. Stevedores would have blushed.
I was in physical pain, but also extremely frustrated with my boring, go nowhere life and the fact that I’ve outgrown my current home. There’s simply not enough room here for me, my ego and all these ghostly memories. It’s too damn small.
With you thribbing, I immediately went on a real estate website, earmarked three homes, called my realtor, toured the three dwellings over the next two days and found myself making an offer on one home 72- hours later. Damned if the homeowners didn’t accept it.
This was my reaction to their swift response ….it was similar to my toe mishap.
For you young ones, this is an old school dialog bubble that was placed over heads of hand drawn characters in comics….the funny pages, as some called them. See, there used to be things called “newspapers” and the Sunday edition included pages of cartoons, comics, funnies. And whenever a character got angry, instead of using an F-bomb that would have been their undoing, cartoonists implied cussing by using question marks, pound signs, at symbols, ampersands, the etcetera symbol, and so on.. Let me put it in terms you might better understand: these were early versions of wingdings.
And this bubble with all those implied expletives stayed above my head since the owners accepted my offer. In a way, I was hoping they’d laugh, mock me and go with another offer. But they didn’t and my phobia of commitment became full blown panic.
But, what can I say?? It’s happening. My family has been very supportive, including my mother who like Mikey in the classic Life cereal commercial, disapproves of almost everything.
They insist this is exactly what I need—the ultimate project. They’ve suggested in no uncertain terms, that if I DON’T make a drastic change soon, healing won’t ever start, much less scab over.
So, I thought about the offer they accepted, sent up queries to the Divine, the Cosmos and even sought answers from pantheons of gods I don’t believe in and got my answer very quickly: I have to commit to change. I need to commit to renewal. I realized I can handle scar tissue much better while living in a slightly bigger home, with almost all of the amenities I’d asked for. It isn’t that far from where I currently live, but there’s enough distance to feel the change…to actually breathe different air.
So, I signed the papers and wrote a check in which I dotted the “i” with tears caused from buyer’s remorse. But it’s getting better.
I’ll move in July.
In the interim, I’ll throw away what needs tossing, give away what I can give, donate whatever might help others and then endeavor to perform an exorcism of sorts. Ghosts aren’t always floating ectoplasmic globs. Painful memories and sadness are more formidable haunts. These things can be imprinted in the interior of a home. You can paint, replace tile, tear down walls and construct new ones, but once the soul of a home is fractured, it’s a loss cause.
They only way to repair a sad home is to give it a reason not to be sad. I have to change. I have to be better, more emotionally intact and I’ll have to make sure it’s enough to cover the walls, the floor, the ceiling, enough to infiltrate the plumbing and the HVAC system And more importantly, I can’t move into my new home with the weightiness of woe. I’m now too in debt to be pathetic.
Things will get better. I’m getting better and my Easter/Seder gift to my tens of readers is as follows: I’ll no longer bore you with any more of these sad ass sob stories that have turned me into a poor woman’s Edna St. Vincent Millay. Promise.
Shalom.
Peace.
Happy Easter.
Chag Sameach
And for my friend RMD, it’s Sunday.
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